lawndartman
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Time to close this thread......
I was wondering why Andrew and his crew didn't make their own tubes, couplers, and nose cone. You don't need to be an engineer to build a kit from parts purchased. Would be a great learning project to build all your own parts.
Maybe. I don't know, Xometry committed an engineering team for three days to RFQ a fifty dollar solidworks component. (I know they lost money on that.) They were on the phone for three hours. But hey it's not fair to compare a NASA contractor that deals with engineering projects and manufacturing firms to Madcow at all. That's just engineering projects. Requires data. Your picture of a product won't do. Technical specs. Some businesses want your business harder than others. Another firm put a thank you card and FedExed an order for free from California. They weren't one or two person operations but multimillion dollar firms. They have bigger orders with BMW, GE, DOD, and yet they still listen. Amazing.
They didn't care if it's a one off order or a full scale I need 30,000 components by next Friday type deal. They treated you with the same respect and tried to answer questions. Guess who got repeat orders. The people that were easier to work with got our repeat business.
They did this because they found the project interesting; not because they were interested in customer service. I worked at an aerospace firm and designers and engineers get bored just like everyone else. The chance to do something unique and help some college kids is why they did it. And engineers rarely gave a rat's behind about a customer. Plus engineering time was costed out at $150 an hour at my company. I bet no one in management knew what these guys were doing to help you or they would have had a major hissy fit. When you get out of college and get your 60 hour a week job you will understand.
I was wondering why Andrew and his crew didn't make their own tubes, couplers, and nose cone. You don't need to be an engineer to build a kit from parts purchased. Would be a great learning project to build all your own parts.
We read Jim Jarvis 212 page tutorial on rolling tubes and thought out of our skill level.
I designed supersonic airfoil fins, custom printed nosecones, jigs and cnc fabbed launch tower for a TRA record 20,000ft+. Outsourced manufacturing of parts. It was stable till Mach 1.5 until Custom interstage power series shell imploded. We had sanded tube all by half. Couldn't tilt head fast enough. I should just post pics in multistage thread. Nosecone has patentable features and has drag coefficient with volume we wanted. We only used a store bought tube then you guys get all wank. We imploded it at Utah. Those once or twice a year waivers suck.
We read Jim Jarvis 212 page tutorial on rolling tubes and thought out of our skill level.
We had enough fun figuring out Raven 3, minitimer4, and a TeleGPS. I was a mech student with ham license. Putting those with an I1299N-P was a bad call. We were new like Lpr new. The body tube sheared in half but oddly some fins and nosecone profile lived upon crash. I did the aero and it was stable. This first HPR rocket gave us the design experience to design a second one in under a week and relaunch for third nationally. We blew $2.5k on first rocket which is why we transitioned to modifying kits on second launch with our own custom nosecone. You five fold costs to double altitude predicted. Second rocket we flew two H's nerfing it for a lower FAA waiver.
We started a rocket team. We traveled to three states which was expensive for a new team. Custom components will easily blow a half grand on a small multistage on L-1 size. Nobody likes to manufacture small airfoils. You will piss people off. Most say IMPOSSIBLE. Then you look hard enough and someone will for $175+ a fin. But then material choices suck compared to 6061T6. Our second rocket was modify two of Tim's kits as a last ditch Soviet Era simplify everything approach and try to place decent on like a budget that didn't exist. And we flew second iteration of structurally improved custom nosecone. Strengthen the nosecone shoulder.
Some other crap teams flew entire stock formula 54 even with stock decals. Our team was so noob we designed and built our own launch control HPR box too. We showed up with this scraggy thing and they are like we use Wilson put that up before get zapped. Tower is adjustable and used 1010 rails wasn't bad for $70 in materials.
Time to close this thread......
Andrew,
You have a rather common ability to read a conversation purely in order to give the response you want to. As a general suggestion you should take more time to read, and less time to respond. It will massively improve your interactions with future customers and suppliers in whatever field you end up in. It would also cut your post count down massively as you may be able to write one response instead of three more often, which would in turn mean others take more time to read and consider your posts.
Anyone having trouble getting response from Madcow? I've been trying to get some replacement parts for a mongoose 38mm, and nobody answers the phone, can't leave a message that lasts for more than a few seconds (which nobody responds to) and can't get an email response from their web support. (well, they responded once after a couple weeks, but now nothing).
/p
I wouldn't say that engineers don't give a rat's behind about the customer. Most of them care very much about getting the customer the product that the engineer thinks that they need. Whether that's what the customer actually needed or asked for is another question entirely. Engineers will also do a lot for an interesting project if they can get it past or around management. It helps if you're nice to them and/or bring donuts. I loved working with the cadets at the Coast Guard or Naval Academies because they were always so darn nice to me.
Now that I think about it, engineers aren't so different from other people*. They'll usually do a lot for you if you're nice, have reasonable requests, and respect their knowledge and experience.
* Stop snickering, dammit!
Hi everyone, and YIKES, did not mean for this to become this kind of rant...just wanted to know if there was some problem or a better channel.
Sorry I wasn't paying attention for a few days - but finally got a response today, and the order should be finalized via a paypal invoice imminently.
And, for the record, I've always had good response with Madcow; this was the only time that they were "off grid" it seemed.
/p
Madcow only got about $200. They couldn't answer a simple question about a outer diameter of a product they sold for weeks. All he had to do was pick up the phone, get a caliper ,and put it around the outside of the tube or better yet five or six tubes different and average the value. We just couldn't deal with his anemic response time where weeks meant unacceptable deadline shifts ...clipped out you telling us all how awesome you are and super super super smart....
There were 88 SEDS teams last year. So somewhere between $176k-305k went to various rocket parts just for SEDS. Triple that for IREC and that's a yearly income. The smart business will pick up phone and attempt to answer a question.
You do realize he doesn't make the tubes in question, and they're likely drop shipped from Curtis?
There are very few rocket kit manufacturers/sellers that have anything close to a legal department. Also...statistics. Riiiiiight.Legal departments hate numbers.
sorry for ticking all of you off. I probably just overreacted a tad into rant.
I did not know that. Maybe the manufacturer of tubes had to statistically collect a bunch of lots for sample sizing to prove a tube diameter to ultimately get published by Madcow officially which may take a lot longer than a typical request not for accuracy but for a legal reason. Legal departments hate numbers. **Glare shifts to tube manufacturer**
All I know is Madcow eventually fixed the database error. It just took time. Perhaps summer launches are like peak for the rocket shops. I'll probably order from them in the future but sorry for ticking all of you off. I probably just overreacted a tad into rant. That would be cool if the mergers would help Madcow pick up more workers.
There are very few rocket kit manufacturers/sellers that have anything close to a legal department. Also...statistics. Riiiiiight.
. That would be cool if the mergers would help Madcow pick up more workers.
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